The battle for your streaming dollar is growing ever tougher, and for the first time in many years Netflix is losing ground.

A new study released by Digitalsmiths, which studied 3,140 peoples’ viewing habits, gives us an interesting look at what services cord cutters are using. Overall 61.9% of respondents said they subscribe to a video streaming service, which is up 5.6% from 2015 and up 13.7% over the last 3 years.

Here are the services the subscribers said they used.

(Note: The question is what services do you USE, not pay for. This is most important for the Amazon Prime numbers because these numbers show people who use the Prime Video service not people who subscribe to Prime.)

While there is no major shakeup as the top 3 remain unchanged there is an interesting change in the path of the top two streaming services.

Netflix has had steady growth for the last 3 years, growing from 41.7% in 2013 to 51.8% in third quarter 2016. However, there has been a drop in Netflix’s market share in 2016. Back in the second quarter 2016 Netflix had a 53.7% market share, which dropped to 51.8% in the third quarter 2016.

Many are pointing to the recent Netflix price increase and decreasing catalog as the reasons behind the dwindling subscriber counts; however, some of it also has to do with the fact of an ever-growing market. No longer is Netflix the only service out there that offers great movies and TV shows.

Now as Netflix’s numbers are dropping, Amazon Prime’s numbers continue to grow from just 12.9% in 2013 to 24.8% in 2016. And, Amazon Prime has seen growth year after year even with price increases.

Although Netflix seems to still have a solid lead over its competition it is starting to raise the question of how long. For now we will have to wait and see if Netflix’s move to focus on original content will pay off.

I understand the numbers behind the article, but it is not a winner-take-all scenario either. At least in our household, although Netflix is still the most watched, we are using Amazon a great amount more than we did two years ago. I hope both services keep improving.

I know why they do it (to make money) but i dont like using amazon videos with the kids because they will search for a movie or a show that is a purchase only and it wont let them watch it. With netflix it is what you see is what you get.

Amazon numbers are misleading. Most people have amazon prime for 2 day shipping like me. Amazon prime video just comes free with it. To me, Amazon prime video choices suck. I’d rather scroll through netflix for 20 minutes than amazon prime for hours trying to find a decent show.

Amazon began charging for two shows I used to binge watch, so I resubscribed to Netflix. I did use Prime for the shipping, no longer buy much there — in the three days fast shipping applies — and certainly don’t find enough videos worth watching. Just another business that got too big. Netflix does what it does, best.

I am currently re-enjoying the series 24 on Amazon Prime, and there are also some interesting foreign shows (mostly British) on there. I haven’t found much to like in their original content. But it’s all just a bonus as I was already a member for the shipping deals.

Most of Netflix original series are far superior, but the trend I really don’t like, that’s effecting much of the premium (commercial free) streaming TV show offerings is the redefining of a “season” of TV to be as little as 8 -10 episodes. Once upon a time, a season was 23-26 episodes, and it lasted, with the typical holiday and sports interruptions, from late September till March/April. From which was born the phrase Summer Reruns.

Add this to the other change in TV shows dramas from being mainly episodic, a contained story beginning and ending in a single episode, with perhaps a small amount of carryover story involving the recurring characters personal lives, to solely continuing stories, sort of like 10 part mini series, which, if they are binge-able(Netflix and Amazon), you could get through in a day or two, or at its longest (HBO and Showtime) would last 10 weeks – and you then have to wait an entire year to see where it’s going next. I don’t know about everyone else, but I definitely require at least a one episode refresher from the end of the last season before starting the next. It’s just too long a wait in between. But I suppose it’s better than the alternative – 20 minutes of commercials for every hour of programming.

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